New Memoir from Unabomber’s Neighbor Seeks Deeper Understanding of the Infamous Criminal, While Giving Voice to True Crime’s Often-Overlooked Perspectives
“Jamie Gehring’s book might well be the best attempt yet to understand the strange life and mind of my brother, Theodore J. Kaczynski.” —David Kaczynski, brother of Unabomber Ted Kaczynski
In her new memoir – which has been praised by FBI agents, documentarians and even family members of the infamous Unabomber – author Jamie Gehring provides a haunting account of the 16 years she and her family lived closer than anyone to Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, sharing their Montana land, their home, and their dinner table with a hermit who had a penchant for murder. Madman in the Woods (April 19, 2022, Diversion Books) is Gehring’s investigative quest 25 years later to reclaim a piece of her childhood by answering the questions: why, how?
As a child in Lincoln, Montana, in the 1980s and ’90s, Jamie Gehring had no idea that Ted Kaczynski—the self-sustaining hermit in the adjacent cabin—was anything more than the neighbor who brought her painted rocks as a gift. Ted was simply Ted, and erratic behavior, surprise visits, and chilling events while she was riding horses or helping her dad at his sawmill were dismissed because he was “just the odd hermit.” He was, in fact, the Unabomber, for 17 years mailing explosives to strangers, the longest-running domestic terrorist in American history.
As an adult with this knowledge, the innocence of her youth robbed, Gehring needed to reconcile her lived experience with the evil that hid in plain sight. In this book, through years of research probing Ted’s personal history, his writings, his secret coded crime journals, her own correspondence with him in his Supermax prison cell, plus interviews with others close to Kaczynski, Gehring unearths the complexity, mystery and tragedy of her childhood with the madman in the woods. And she discovers a shocking revelation—she and her family were in Kaczynski’s crosshairs. Meet Jamie Gehring, April 22nd from 4-5pm at the Denver Public Library.
Jamie Gehring is a Montana native who grew up sharing a backyard with Ted Kaczynski, the man widely known as the Unabomber. She was featured in Netflix’s Unabomber—In His Own Words where she discussed her family’s role in Ted’s capture. She earned her BA in visual communications and has worked in financial advising and graphic design. She currently lives in Denver, Colorado with her husband and three children. You can find out more about Jamie on her website: www.jamiegehring.com.